The Story Of CARtoons: a history

Cartoons. Yeah. That incredibly flexible medium capable of anything imagined, conjured up, or verbalized. A cartoon is simply what the illustrator wants it to be. It maintains a multitude of thought: idealism, prejudice, open-mindedness, hate, love, indifference, all the greatness and all the maladies of modern society. It is the image that tells the story with a special clarity, accentuating the text that usually accompanies it. Although there were several hot rod comic publishersthe more well-known among them Fawcett, Ziff-Davis, Charlton (later Hanna-Barbera), Marvel, and Hot Wheelsthis story is about contributions to the genre by the talent at Petersen Publishing.

Most of us found meaning and often some sort of relief in comic books in the Paleolithic days of television, essentially lighthearted tableaus of the foibles and tribulations of ordinary life but often cemented with a sense of morality, vindication, or even mild forms of revenge. Im talking about the stuff you could find in a stationery store or on any enlightened newsstand, not the underground ultra-liberal adult comics that were popular during the 60s and 70s and covered everything from political and social commentary to misogynistic pornography and just about anything else.

My tastes werent ordinary, and certainly there must have been a fluid market for pre-pubescent weirdos like me in the early 50s. War comics were favorites, then later the Mad books, but beyond all else my desires were wholly attached to the horror genre, and the gorier and more explicit they were, the better I liked them. The most graphic were the grisly tales as illustrated by Robert Gaines DC Comics, the same outfit that published Superman and a host of other mainstream tabloids.

The DC stuff was harebrained, beautifully illustrated, distasteful trash that represented a clandestine cove of freedom to a repressed subculture of preteen kids who could rarely find it in the written word, much less in a rag that cost a dime. Most were wicked vignettes of horror, revenge, or retribution. They dealt with stuff that was taboo, and to an adolescent these pulps were nearly as coveted as a crinkled issue of Playboy or Swank.

By comparison, Petersen Publishings playful panels were squeaky clean and good fun that capitalized on and portrayed the burgeoning hot rodding (most often with tongue-in-cheek) and drag racing hobbies (drag racing had not yet become infested with corporate agenda). The element of sex was always there, too, though in a wholesome and accepted mannere.g., full, round bottoms, ample bosoms, but without sexual overtones. In an era that lasted more than 30 years, Petersen produced three such titles in quantity: CARtoons (1959-1991), Hot Rod Cartoons (1964-1974), and CYCLEtoons (1968-1973). Pete also opened the portfolio for the less successful SKItoons (1968) and SURFtoons (1965-1968). Save for these two books, the same freelance cartoonists worked on all three of the others.

Carl Kohler and Pete Millar originated CARtoons as a quarterly publication. Though Carl left the book after the first issue, Millar carried it through until 1963 (issue number 11). He carried this momentum into his own DRAGcartoons . During its long tenure, CARtoons editors were Dick Day (later editor of Car Craft and publisher of Hot Rod ), Tom Medley (more about him later), Dennis Ellefson (previously of CYCLEtoons ), and Jack Bonnestell (according the Millar, the funniest man alive, and the first to admit that he wasnt the greatest cartoonist around).

Pete Millar recognizes two separate forms of hot rod comics. First there was the adventure 6-¾x10-1/8-inch size comic book, and it was more illustrative than cartooning. The artists were some of the finest and knowledgeable of the time. Most of these adventure comics were turned out by a team of artists that is to say there were those who wrote the stories, those who laid them out and penciled them, those who did the inking, those who did the lettering, and finally if it needed colors inside, there was the colorist. The covers were usually done by the best all-around member of the team. For that reason, it proved to be most difficult to identify those individuals and give them the credit they deserved.

The other form Millar calls funny books, the kind of art that flourished in comics like CARtoons . Physically, they were 8-½x11-inch, the conventional magazine size, Although the first four of these (CARtoons ) were 5-1/8x8-inch (put out by Trend Publishing, which then became Petersen Publishing), and they dealt mostly in humor (albeit often politically motivated or peppered with insider jabs). Like the adventure artists, the cartoonists and writers were true professionals and knew their subject matter, and at the same time they were funny! In most cases, the cartoonists did it all, although there were times when a writer would submit a story the editor found to his liking and then assign it to his favorite cartoonist. But both would get recognition for the story.

As CARtoons continued to thrive and Millars DRAGcartoons became successful, Petersen thought it a perfect opportunity to give his ex-employee some needling and instituted Hot Rod Cartoons in 1964 with George Pappy Lemmons in charge. Although Lemmons was a welder, he wielded a mean pen and was totally conversant with the subject matter, a combination that the savvy Petersen knew would work. Unlike CARtoons , HRC used the Hot Rod logo but discontinued it after issue number 6 (Sept. 65). HRC continued for 10 years with a caricature of the bearded Lemmons on every cover.

When I arrived at Petersen Publishing in 1969, Tom Medley hadnt done a cartoon in Hot Rod for nearly 10 years. Although his work had been in the first issue in 1948 and had continued until the early 60s (he was then the advertising manager at Hot Rod), I knew him as the majordomo at Rod & Custom , whose offices were 3 feet from ours at Car Craft . Arguably, Medley is the first of the true hot rod cartoonists and remains the number one such of all time, best known for the creation of the supremely inventive and indefatigable Stroker McGurk, who was, in essence, the spirit of hot rodding and Hot Rod magazine (meanwhile, Millar penned Arin Cee, Rod & Custom s regular goof).

Strokers exploits were often impossible, always amusing, and his conviction and fortitude never wavered. In those days, the hobby of hot rodding was under constant surveillance by city fathers as well as law enforcement and was trying hard to overcome its outlaw and street-racing image. For hot rodding and drag racing to expand (and otherwise be profitable), it had to become respectable in the public eye. Editor Wally Parks fashioned Hot Rod magazine as a public blueprint for hot rodders as clean-cut and law-abiding, helpful to the community at large, and not unlike an adult chaperone at a high school hop.

Medleys Stroker character embodied that credo as envisioned by Parks. Dennis Ellefson, on the other paw, was a free-wheeler who didnt live vicariously through his art. He was a cartoonist and caricaturist and one of the best minds in the business. He was enthralled by early Mad magazines, war, and of course, horror comics. He liked to draw and collect comics and imitate those he admired most. As editor of CARtoons , his collective characters always starred in The Adventures of Hogg Ryder panels.

Dennis and I shared conversations over more than one beer, and our favorite hang-out was Barneys Beanery, a few steps off Santa Monica Boulevard. We rarely talked cars or cartoons, and he never mentioned his wife or three daughters. We were misanthropes, we wailed company sedition and whooped antiestablishment craziness and then laughed about it as we trudged up the La Cienega Blvd. incline and went back to work in the proper frame of mind. You needed a lead illustration or art for a photo-less story, and Dennis reply would be How soon do you want it? But he struggled with an internal blackness that he couldnt overcome, and some of it became the pages of underground comics. The rest of it slowly squeezed the sap out of him and his will to carry on. I miss him, his irreverence, and his extreme talent.

George Trosley was an eastern boy who attended the Hussian School of Commercial Art in Philadelphia during the day and fussed with prewar hot rods in the evening. In 73, he went on his own as a freelancer. Id always been a major fan of Pete Millar and Petersens CARtoons , so I dropped it into gear. Eventually, Editor Dennis Ellefson gave me the opportunity to do some of my reoccurring characters. I created Krass and Bernie, largely patterned after my brother and me. They ripped apart and rebuilt tons of wild rods for the next 20 years... and I loved it. During this period, I also produced hundreds of cartoons and humorous illustrations for various other car magazines, including Rod & Custom . My other work has been published in a variety of magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post , Saturday Review , National Enquirer , New Woman , and Hustler .

Krass and Bernie was the first story in every issue from Feb. 75 until the last one in Aug. 91. Sometimes Ellefson ran two K&B adventures or a second Trosley story in the same issue. George also did a how-to section that consisted of step-by-step renderings, from simple rectangles to compound curves of the finished art. His work appeared in more issues of CARtoons than any other artist.

Its pages were a wacky mixture of cartoon stories, old photos with mostly humorous balloon captions, usually two of the ever-popular T-shirt iron-on transfers, and later featured four-color pullout posters in the centerspread (post-66). During the Vietnam era (64-75), the front of the book was littered with fan mail, lots of it from GIs hungry for female pen pals or any human voice that could connect them with The World, if only through a few written lines. Although there was minimal advertising, a smattering of paid linage began to appear toward the last of the 80s, an effort to hold the cover price down and to continue making fiscal sense.

Though the magazine was published as a bimonthly, some years in the 70s had eight issues, ending with issue 101. Then the Best of compilations began with the Fall 77 book and continued as a quarterly until Winter 78. In 79, CARtoons assumed its original bimonthly schedule and continued until it ended abruptly in 1991. By that time, it had three distinct followingsthe young enthusiast, the comic book collector, and the comic book cultistsbut collectively they werent enough to sustain it. The reason was moolah, not enough return on investment. The costs of printing, paper, mailing, and the newsstand spiff was spinning a few thousand rpm faster than the magazines ability to keep up with it. Advertising reigned like T-Rex. Bean-counters and efficiency freaks began slashing through the historical imperative. CARtoons had become a stepchild of the circulation department, and those who tried to save it simply ran out of arguments against its demise. Viva CARtoons!